Kids music taste

[Philly Q]

Maybe being a session musician and out of the public eye would be far more interesting!

That's always appealed to me a lot more.  When I first started reading Guitar Player about 30 years ago they often had interviews with session players (who I'd never heard of!).  It sounded like bloody hard work - much more like a "real job" than being in a band - but interesting, well paid and with the benefits of anonymity and a relatively normal life.

Of course, you'd need serious skillz (bit of a problem for me!).  And from reading some of Steve Lukather's recent interviews, opportunities in the session scene aren't what they were in the '80s.

[Philly Q]

I don't think the stuff you listen to later in life ever means as much as the stuff you were into between 16 and 20.

I think that is true of passive music fans, not at all of more active music fans. In fact, pretty much everyone I know posting on music forums listens to completely different stuff in even their early twenties than in their late teens, though some of it will still crop up obviously, and it keeps developing as they get older, I think it starts to settle more in the late 20s/early 30's, but I've still plenty pals in the 40s and 50s discovering new (and new sounding, not Joe Bonamassa, y'know? :P) stuff all the time.

Oh well, I guess that makes me a passive music fan.  I'll have to learn to live with it.  :roll:

[nfe]

I'd have picked better words than passive and active if I could of thought of them, but the meaning is there. There's a difference between folks who who go to a few gigs and year and buy a handful of records and people who go to a few gigs a week and buy dozens of records a month, y'know? Not just monetarily, most gigs I go to are cheapy local jobs.

Neither way is better or worse, obviously, there's no problem with loving the music you listen to in your teens for the rest of your life and being quite happy with it, but it sorta feeds into the "nothing good gets released anymore" rubbish that has irritated me on here (and plenty places elsewhere) before. If you don't want to look for it, that's fine, but don't presume it isn't there, y'know? Same deal.

[Dmoney]

I've been really down about the music in my life for quite a while.
I used to listen to a pretty small niche of music, and like you said, I feel that not much released in that vein recently really grabs my attention. I do still listen out for something new and good within that genre, but lack of musical invention in that 'scene' coupled with with how that scene operates logistically is what gets to me.

It's strange how things totally outside of a record and music can put me off a something I've been involved with for my adult life. That said... putting on the blinkers and focussing on what you do enjoy seems to be the way forward. I used to wonder why some bands and labels are just centered on recycling members and playing the same venues... it seems stagnant. However, I now realise that this is the best way to enjoy playing the music you like. Playing it with your friends, to your friends, and having a means to release music and play gigs that is quite close to being self sufficient.

Over the past couple of years I've got into hiphop more and more, as well as other things. I listened to Earth - Pentastar for the first time recently and I really enjoyed it... more so than the album Hex. I liked it because to me it sounds very bluesy, and thats my roots. I have trouble getting into a lot of stuff because I just can't relate to it. I can't be bothered listen to peoples poor singing about how cool devils are stuff are. It's just jibberish to me.

My sister likes Europe and Lost Prophets. She used to like Kill Your Idols when she was 6 or 7 but she went off them. you can't please some people.

[Philly Q]

I'd have picked better words than passive and active if I could of thought of them, but the meaning is there. There's a difference between folks who who go to a few gigs and year and buy a handful of records and people who go to a few gigs a week and buy dozens of records a month, y'know? Not just monetarily, most gigs I go to are cheapy local jobs.

Neither way is better or worse, obviously, there's no problem with loving the music you listen to in your teens for the rest of your life and being quite happy with it, but it sorta feeds into the "nothing good gets released anymore" rubbish that has irritated me on here (and plenty places elsewhere) before. If you don't want to look for it, that's fine, but don't presume it isn't there, y'know? Same deal.

Fair points of course, and I am guilty of saying nothing good gets released anymore and of only going to a few gigs a year.  I still buy quite a lot of records but they're mostly back-catalogue.

But I do think when we have these discussions you imply - perhaps unintentionally - that there's a kind of moral superiority in going to lots of gigs and actively seeking out new music ("moral" is the wrong word there, but I can't think how else to put it).

I have done those things - I didn't stop listening to new music in 1985!  I was never "underground" (another dent to my credibility) but all through my 20s and even into my 30s I was going to lots of gigs, buying lots of new music.  I guess I was an active music fan, just about.

But I'm 46 now and, whether I like it or not, I've changed.  It wasn't intentional, it just happened.  The fact is, I don't enjoy gigs any more - they're too loud and I don't like being crushed in rowdy crowds and getting home late with my ears ringing.  I try to listen to new things but, like it or not, they rarely move me and more often than not they just sound like retreads of something I heard years ago.  I can't force myself to like it.

Of course I could be much more active seeking out new music - and deep down I'm sure there is lots of good stuff I'm missing - but I'm not going to do it just for the sake of it.

Look Neil, I know it's impossible to win an argument with you   .  But maybe, just maybe, you'll get into your 40s one day and find you experience something like this yourself.  Pax.  :)

[JDC]

My 4 year old & I regularly debate whether "Stengah" or "Pravus" is the better Meshuggah song...

(Although I think he's gradually coming round to my opinion that Elastic is the best of all...) :)

You're both wrong, it's clearly Rational Gaze, no wait Straws Pulled At Random, gah there is Bleed too

Look what you done!!!

[nfe]

I maybe will, but like I say some of my most enthusiastic gig-going and new-music-seeking-out friends are twenty+ years older than me. One of my colleagues in putting the festivals on is 47 and is generally the one trying to push the most "groundbreaking" acts on us. So maybe I'll end up more like them.

I don't intend to imply moral superiority, but it does frustrate me a great deal which no doubt creeps through. Putting on festivals full of underground, new, great bands and struggling to sell tickets, and all that! :P

[Philly Q]

I don't intend to imply moral superiority, but it does frustrate me a great deal which no doubt creeps through. Putting on festivals full of underground, new, great bands and struggling to sell tickets, and all that! :P

Fair enough.  :lol:

For my part, I get frustrated because these discussions always make me feel like I'm being put in the same bracket as people who once saw the Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium and whose entire record collections consist of Wet Wet Wet, Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms, Phil Collins' No Jacket Required and (in a bold nod to the contemporary music scene) Robbie Williams' greatest hits.

Maybe I am like that, but when I see the thousands of CDs and LPs in my collection, I don't like to think so...  :P

[Sailor Charon]

I'm sure it suits some people, addicted to the lifestyle, desperately trying to look and act like they're still teenagers, with their silly hairpieces and hideously inappropriate skinny jeans, using their "rock star" status to pull tragically stupid young girls who wouldn't look twice at them under normal circumstances..... (why have I got the images of Ratt, Motley Crue and Don Dokken in my mind?)

The weird thing is, I'm now 41, going on 42, and my waist measurement is as low, if not lower than when I was 18. Actually, maybe not 18, I'd started putting weight on... Ok 17. Or maybe 21 when I'd got rid of the weight again... :) Do they do 28" waist jeans that aren't skinny? Or maybe I should get a pair of denim hakama (Japanese trousers with legs that are so wide they look like a skirt)? [Actually, I'd quite like a pair...]

[dave_mc]

I'd have picked better words than passive and active if I could of thought of them, but the meaning is there. There's a difference between folks who who go to a few gigs and year and buy a handful of records and people who go to a few gigs a week and buy dozens of records a month, y'know? Not just monetarily, most gigs I go to are cheapy local jobs.

Neither way is better or worse, obviously, there's no problem with loving the music you listen to in your teens for the rest of your life and being quite happy with it, but it sorta feeds into the "nothing good gets released anymore" rubbish that has irritated me on here (and plenty places elsewhere) before. If you don't want to look for it, that's fine, but don't presume it isn't there, y'know? Same deal.

i don't like the implication that the only thing that makes you interested in music is how many gigs you go to. When it's a 100 mile round trip to get to any gig, and when about 2 bands a year you like play within those 100 miles, it's not so much a choice as being forced into it. And when most of the venues are complete shitee, to the extent that you're both deafened and actually can't hear what's going on... er, yeah. :lol:

I mean I've played a musical instrument of some kind since I was 7. My mum used to threaten me with stopping my piano lessons if i misbehaved.

So, er, yeah. I listen to some of the same stuff i listened to when i was 18 and some different stuff. :? I'm with philly, basically.

Oh and the accusation that joe bonamassa sounds exactly like eric clapton mixed with eric johnson is entirely baseless :lol:

[Philly Q]

Oh and the accusation that joe bonamassa sounds exactly like eric clapton mixed with eric johnson is entirely baseless :lol:

I've got to say, Bonamassa in "rock mode" on the Black Country Communion album does sound a hell of a lot like Eric Johnson!  :lol:

[dave_mc]

oh i mean I like joe bonamassa, but he is a bit derivative at times. I like the fact that someone like him can still get (relatively) famous these days, but he's not really doing anything that EJ (IMO, obviously) hasn't done better.

I haven't heard black country communion yet, i just meant his other stuff. Some of his licks and stuff are very eric johnson-y.

EDIT: robben ford too. I haven't heard much robben ford, but what I have heard sounds very like bonamassa at times too :lol:

[nfe]

There's nothing wrong with sounding derivative if it's done well of course, but it's nice to hear things that genuinely sound new, too. Which there is still plenty of, regardless of "everything is just rehashes and covers and reboots and remakes nananana" that we hear about modern entertainment.

[dave_mc]

oh yeah, sure, I agree. I always get tired of e.g. the guardian's arts and music section where it's like everything has to be 100% original or it's instantly cr@p- apart from, of course, the stuff which its critics just happen to like :lol: But they're allowed to just like stuff, whereas the rest of us aren't :roll: